Terry Johnson's "Hysteria' at the Wilma

Hysteria, currently at the Wilma Theater, offers living proof that some things just don't travel well. Terry Johnson's play received the Olivier Award in 1994 for best new comedy in London, but this fictionalized account of an actual meeting between Sigmund Freud and Salvador Dali goes beyond the sophisticated dialogue of farce, descending into the English version of jolly entertainment. And we must remember: The English have always had a different view of what passes for humor.

The play, directed by Jiri Zizka, takes place in Freud's recently relocated study in London, where he has fled from Vienna with his family after the Third Reich annexed Austria in 1938. The study's antique Persian rugs, famous couch and Biedermeier furnishings evoke the ambiance of his original quarters, a tribute to the set designer Mimi Lien.

The opening scene shows the 82-year-old Freud nodding off in his chair by the couch. It is nighttime. Waking suddenly and thinking he should be listening to a patient, Freud teeters between reality and dreamland.

Off with the clothes

A mysterious woman knocks on his garden door. Or does she? Jessica enters, soaking wet from the rain, and announces that she has come to discuss his writings. She accuses him of revising his thesis on the prevalence of male parental sexual abuse of daughters in order to gain acceptance by the male hegemony. Flinging off her clothes to prove her sincerity, Jessica claims to possess a private journal that will prove her point. Freud shuts her in the bathroom when his doctor arrives with medication to ease his cancer-driven pain. Salvador Dali, in all his eccentricity, appears bearing a painting as homage to the great man. The nude Jessica emerges from the closet and mayhem begins.

Is it all a metaphor for closet sexual proclivities? A Freudian dream? Or a spin-off from an actual meeting between Dali and Freud? Take your pick.

Jessica and Dali provide the slapstick chases but not the farce of a Noel Coward's bedroom comedy. But you couldn't call it a sophisticated comedy, because Jessica's claimed knowledge of Freud's writing just doesn't ring true.

(In the interest of full disclosure: My mother was English, my brother is a psychiatrist and I confess to an abiding admiration for Dali's art.)

Things improve in the second act, which is primarily a superbly executed vision of Freud's imagination, thanks in particular to the lighting designer, Jerold Forsyth. But did it really enhance the play to have a Nazi soldier goose-stepping across the stage and Holocaust prisoners marching past, undressing and falling under the "final solution" while Dali's limp clocks and bloody hands drop from overhead? Is this what London considers the comedy of the year?

When weak material happens to good actors

Alvin Epstein is superb as the aging, terminally ill Sigmund Freud. Watching this pro in action almost makes sitting through the entire play worthwhile. Mervin Goldsmith plays Yahuda, Freud's Jewish physician and faithful friend, who refuses to accept Freud's thesis that religion is the world's worst neurosis. But Goldsmith's acting talent is wasted on this character, a one-dimensional compendium of two real-life individuals.

Salvador Dali, as played by Matthew Floyd Miller, is such a caricature of the real-life artist that he provokes cynicism instead of laughter. Yes, Dali was eccentric— actually crazy like a fox— but he didn't originate Surrealism (and in any case Surrealism was no joke). Dali was, however, a highly skilled painter, devoted to his craft. Miller's pseudo-Spanish accent fades quickly as the play progresses. Soon he turns into a neurotic individual of no certain ethnic origin.

Mary McCool is Jessica, the purely fictional character who embodies the epitome of everyone's nightmare of hysteria. Her penchant for nakedness must be intended to wake up everyone in the audience, but bare flesh can be boring as well.

Freud is too interesting and too complex an individual to be written off with this maudlin finale. It might have been more interesting to conjecture about the real sexual problems of the father of modern psychiatry.♦